YVAN PETITCLERC
TALKS WITH STEVE SAILER, PRESIDENT OF THE HUMAN BIODIVERSITY INSTITUTE
AND ADJUNCT FELLOW OF THE HUDSON INSTITUTE (NEW YORK).

Question:
What did you think of the book Taboo by Jon Entine? Are his observations
accurate and relevant?

Answer:
That people of West African descent tend to do better than other people
(with the possible exception of Samoans) at sports requiring explosive
muscularity is completely obvious to anybody who watches sports on TV.
On average, young men of West African descent in prime physical condition
are simply more muscular than young men of European descent who have worked
out equally hard. The largest differences are in lower body strenght which
is why no one besides a West African has ever run 100 meters in less than
10 seconds.

Q:
What about other distances?

A:
There are sports where West Africans are at a disadvantage. The most obvious
is distance running. Racial group's success in different length events
can be plotted on a graph, where they tend to come out as bell curves centering
around their best distances. African Americans and other members of the
West African diaspora hold the top 500 times ever in the 100 meters dash
and are almost as strong in the 200m and 400m. By the 800m however they
are merely competitive on the world scale. By the 1500m they only show
up rarely in world-class events, and they are unknown in the 5000m.

In contrast Kenyans from the East African Highlands now and then win bronze
medals in the 400m but have the world record holder in the 800m. Their
peak event is the 3000m steeplechase. The last time I checked, they held
94 of the top 100 times. Kenyan's performances fall off the longer the
race. In the marathon they are very strong but hardly dominant. Mexicans
are strongest at 10 000m and the marathon and Northeast Asians
only appear in the world ranking at the marathon. European and white Americans
are fairly mediocre at most distances doing best in the 800m, 1500m and
marathon where neither the West Africans nor the Kenyans are at their best.
There is no way to explain these patterns purely using social factors.
Track coaches are constantly pushing their runners to try different lengths.
The Kenyan Olympic team would love to have some great sprinters and the
Jamaican team some distance runners. It just doesn't happen because of
psychological differences.

Q:
Why is it so difficult to discuss that objectively?

A:
Americans talk racial differences all the time in sports bars. We're not
just supposed to write about them. Of course you can have a much more intelligent
discussion in print. Jon Entine should be praised for writing a smart,
perceptive and balanced book on this important subject.

On
patterns and sports

Q:
What pattern did you see in term of human diversity and sports achievement
during the last Sydney Olympics?

A:
Racial differences are clearest in running, precisely because it's the
most equal opportunity sport in the world. As equality of opportunity in
track increased during the first half of the 20th century you saw the sport
become more integrated, just as you would expect if social differences
were much more important than biological differences. Initially only the
Anglo-Saxon nations did well in track back in the first few Olympics largely
because they invented modern track. By 1912 the Finns were becoming dominant
because they invented the « scientific » approach
to training and competing. Soon other advanced nations picked up on their
techniques and gold medalists became more widely distributed. Around 1928
both African Americans and Japanese began to do well in track. By the 1936
Berlin Olympics, the 100m dash final consisted of three whites, two blacks
and a East Asian. By the 1960's however as equality of opportunity continued
to increase, a completely unexpected thing began to happen. Greater equality
of opportunity led to more inequality of results a trend that can only
be explained by biological differences.

Men of West African descent began to dominate the sprints. In fact in the
last five Olympic 100m dash finals, all 40 of the male finalists have been
black. Even more strangely, African Americans began to lose interest in
sprinting during this period. I suspect a far higher percentage of the
French population could name the African American who is the current record
holder and gold medalist in the 100m (Maurice Green). Yet African Americans
continued to win many Olympics medals in the 100m-400m range.

Similarly longer distances from the 3000 steeplechase through the 10
000m became dominated by East African highlanders with some competition
from Northwest African Highlanders. No doubt growing up at high altitude
helps, but there are ten of million of people who live at 1500m or higher
in the Western US, Mexico, The Andes, Tibet, Central Asia and other highlands,
yet they don't distinguish themselves in distance running. So the Olympics
are the world's festival of human biodiversity. And the medalists in Sydney's
2000 Games largely followed established racial patterns. In men's track,
the most universally contested, most equal opportunity sport in the world,
East Africans dominated the distance races. From 800 meters through the
marathon, highlanders from the adjoining countries of Kenya and Ethiopia
won 12 of the 18 total medals available. The Atlas mountain countries of
Northeast Africa (Morocco and Algeria) brought home five medals.

A German won the other medal in the white man's traditional strong suit,
the 800 meters. This medium distance race falls between the sweet spots
for West African-descended blacks (100 to 400m) and Ethiopians (5000 to
the marathon). Whites also tend to be consistently mediocre at all distances
thus often do well at 800m.

In the seven sprints, hurdles and relay races from 100 to 400m blacks of
Western African origin won at least 18 medals led by the US with eight.
European whites won one. I don't know the race of the medalists from South
Africa and Saudi Arabia – the Arabs import a lot of Africans to bolster
their Olympic squads.

Q:
What was the situation in all sports overall?

A:
Across all sports in the national medal totals the US came in first. Russia
despite all the chaos at home was an impressive second. For third place
the Chinese edged out the Australians who benefitted from the home field
advantage as well as many of the finest ex-Eastern Bloc athletes that money
could buy, and the Germans. The Chinese though « failed
to make any impact beyond the sports they traditionally dominate in the
words of Scott McDonald of Reuters. » Six sports in
which China has been traditionally strong such as table tennis, diving,
badminton and the new women's weightlifting competition provided 23 of
their gold. Only one medal, a gold in the women's 20 km walk came from
athletics.

On
Race and ImmigrationQ:
Are Latinos in the US mostly classified as white, black or Latino? Does
it make sense to mix a linguistic category with some racial ones in a census?

« The way minority pressure politics work in the US is that small
tightly focused immigrant groups like the Cuban refugees are better able
to exert influence on American foreign policy, but large vaguely defined
groups like "Hispanics" or "Latinos" are more influential in the domestic
race rackets. »

A:
The US census categories don't make much sense at all. Anybody can declare
themselves anything they want on either race or « ethnicity
». Nobody is exactly sure what the term ethnicity means in
theory, but in practice it means having some sort of connection by descent
with either Latin-America or the Spanish Speaking word or something like
that – the various official definitions disagree and nobody is certain
whether say Brazilians or Spaniards or non Spanish-speaking Indians qualify.

The way minority pressure politics work in the US is that small tightly
focused immigrant groups like the Cuban refugees are better able to exert
influence on American foreign policy, but large vaguely defined groups
like « Hispanics » or « Latinos »
are more influential in the domestic race rackets. Thus a wealthy Miami
resident might be a « Cuban » when he's lobbying
his Congressman to keep the embargo on Castro, but he's a poor victimized
« Hispanic » when his son is trying to get into
Harvard on a quota set aside for Hispanics. Why exactly the US provides
job and college preferences to immigrants who chose to come to America
over native born-Americans who didn't chose to be born here is such a mystery
that is almost never discussed in the american press.

Q:
How has the US immigration policy evolved in the last 30 years or so?

A:
It hasn't evolved. The basic policies put in place by Congress in 1965
with little debate or analysis remain largely intact. Nobody will defend
them in detail but it has become almost taboo to criticize them. Immigration
today is dominated by the policy of « familyreunion
» which means that once an extended family gets one member
into the US, the entire family could eventually become eligible to become
permanent resident whether or not they have skills that would make them
a net benefit to current citizens. Our immigration policy is essentially
nepotistic.

Q:
Is there a future for « affirmativeaction »
policies in the US?

A:
Affirmative action has a wonderful future in America. Affirmative action
advocates now justify it not as a means to benefit blacks, but as a benefit
to whites. « Diversity » we are told makes whites
live better in some ill-defined sense. This is a brilliant marketing ploy
because it justifies racial quotas favoring immigrant groups and there's
no time limit to.

Q:
What is the current Bush administration position on the subject?

A:
The new Bush administration has shown no desire to attack racial/ethnic
preferences, because Hispanics benefit from them and Bush number one priority
is to woo the rapidly growing Hispanic population.

Q:
Aren't the Asian Americans more or less ambivalent about all that affirmative
action debate?

A:
Sure, in general the immigrants groups from Northeast Asian and South Asia
who enjoy average IQ's over 100 are penalized by these policies overall,
but their politicians benefit from them personally so most Asian-American
activists are staunchly in favor of the racial spoils system.
Journalist Arthur Hu says that Asian Americans tend to be slightly more
conservative than their neighbors, but because they mostly live in California,
New York and a few other big states, their white neighbors tend to be quite
leftists. Gore carried a solid majority of Asian American in 2000. Because
Bush has chosen to pursue Hispanics rather than Asians who would certainly
be a more natural fit in the Republican party due to their greater affluence.
I suspect Asians will continue their drift toward the Democratic Party.

On
voting patterns and the future

Q:
What are the most important voting patterns in the US? Is there for example
a future for the Republican party outside the traditional white men electorate?

A:
Over 90% of Bush's votes came from whites as compared to about 70% of Gore's.
Bush did a little worse than the average Republican Presidential candidate
among blacks, winning around 9% of their vote. He did a little above average
among Hispanics winning 35% and did much worse than typical among Asians
gaining only around 42% of their vote. The Bush strategy for 2004 is to
increase their share of the Hispanic vote to around 38-40% by opening the
floodgates to even more immigrants from Mexico. Because nobody imagines
that Hispanics will ever vote 50% for Republicans, Bush is following a
classic après moi le déluge plan. Fortunately for
the Bush dynasty they are priming the President's half-Mexican nephew young
Georges P. Bush to be the third generation Bush candidate for President.

Q:
What are the logical consequences of those policies in the long term?

A:
In the long run, immigration leaves the Republican Party with four options:
First, it can become the permanent losing party again, as it was for much
of the 20th century. Second, it can theoretically move so far to the left
that it picks up much higher percentages of minorities. This seems unfeasible
though because the Democrats have a longer history of pandering to racial
pressures groups and would probably win any such arms race.

Third, it can decide during the next recession to cut back on immigration.
This would alienate Hispanics and Asians who already are alienated from
the Republican Party, but it would quickly swing the country in a more
conservative direction. Right now politicians assume that racial quotas,
bilingual education, multiculturalism and a host of other leftists policies
are inevitable because of the inexorably rising tide of immigrants. Shut
off that influx and suddenly the medium political balance will appear to
change dramatically.

Fourth, the Republicans can do a better job at winning white votes. Bush
lost a full 46% of white votes in 2000 and even 40% of white males. In
contrast Gore lost only about 5% of black females. Bush however swept the
heavily black Southern States by winning about two thirds of the white
vote there. Currently Bush is trying to move to the left on racial issues
to appeal to minorities, while he's moving to the right on whites' pet
leftists issues like the environment. This makes almost no sense. Whites
are going to cast almost 80% of the votes in 2004. Alienating upper middle
class whites, the Republicans' natural voter base, by pushing policies
they see as anti-environmental is self-destructive.